In this blog post, Tom Vanderbilt connects the dots between road size ("portions") and driving behavior ("consumption").
"One problem (there are others), Wansink suggests, is that the feedback loops begin to fray with larger portion size: The larger the portion size, the less accurate the estimation of calories consumed becomes."
"But I had a different comparison in mind: The way the size of our roads affects our behavior in 'consuming' them as drivers. This was brought home to me again in a recent video made by a group called Park Slope Neighbors, which is working to reduce the size of streets like Brooklyn's Prospect Park West (a five-lane thoroughfare, two lanes of which are dedicated to parking). As the video below shows, the speeds on the street are routinely in excess of the 30 MPH limit. What makes this particularly worrisome is that across PPW lies Prospect Park itself, and there is thus a steady march of pedestrians (including many children). I'm often struck as a driver by how many people are blowing past me; and, just from personal experience, I see more red-light running on this street than others in NYC."
Read the full story: ‘Portion Distortion’ and the American Road
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